"Havenlet has been captured by us, how is the situation on your side?"
In a rather brief sentence, Elizabeth put the sound-transmitting wood piece to her mouth. After speaking, she touched it with her fingers and spread the message far away.
At this moment, she stood alone in the rooftop garden of the palace, holding on to the fence and looking up at the entire royal capital. The royal capital looked extremely tired. After a long wait, people finally opened the closed doors and stepped forward with cautious and confused expressions, not knowing what to do. From the west of the city to the inner city, scattered corpses and weapon remains were scattered all the way. No one was cleaning them up, which looked extremely dazzling in the midday sun. Some parents quickly covered their children's eyes and hid back home.
In the distance, the West City Gate was broken into pieces and fell limply on the City Gate Street, covered with the footprints of Wood's army.
Not far to the south of the palace, in the direction of St. Peter's Basilica, a ball of flames burned, covering the statues and the courtyard, turning them into ashes bit by bit. Thick smoke reaches straight into the sky, like a waving iron rod that cannot even be blown away by the wind.
A circle of soldiers surrounded the fire, forming a blockade to stop believers who tried to rush in. The believers outside the blockade gathered in circles. Most of them knelt on the ground, and the entire inner city echoed their wails.
Seeing this, Elizabeth couldn't help but take a deep breath and looked back. Then, she heard the noise coming from below the garden. It was Wood's army coming and going, cleaning up the messy streets, busy collecting surrendered soldiers, dealing with captured priests and other things.
—It’s just a routine thing after capturing a city.
Elizabeth was not surprised, although at this moment, she still felt a little unreal like a dream.
"… we won."
She lowered her eyes and muttered silently. She didn't sound very happy, but she felt deeply tired and relieved.
After a long hidden march, they finally arrived at the royal capital. After she showed the black cross, St. Peter's Cathedral lost all power, the protective barrier disappeared on its own, and the few defenders left by the church had no hope of winning.
Half of the people chose to surrender, and half of them resisted. In the end, the only remaining bishop died at the hands of her and three other mages. And now, even if a few hours had passed, those eyes full of resentment and unwillingness still seemed to be dangling in front of her eyes.
Elizabeth shook her head.
A flame ignited from her hand. She held the fire and took out a crumpled letter from her pocket. After thinking about it, she put the letter in the fire and let it burn slowly and turn into ashes bit by bit. Before the envelope was completely engulfed in flames, it seemed that words like "My Amazing Daughter" could be seen on it...
The breeze blew, and the ashes scattered over the palace, disappearing without a trace.
She turned around.
"Your Majesty the Duke, we have roughly searched the royal capital." A general-like figure walked up the stairs, bowed deeply, and then reported, "A total of fifty-seven absconding priests have been captured, and they have all been imprisoned. Forbidden Demon Prison. About twenty priests in the entire royal capital escaped by chance, should we send people to chase them?"
"No need." Elizabeth waved her hand, "Ignore them for now and let's stabilize the situation in the city."
The general nodded and asked: "What about...the believers in Shenyou District?"
When Elizabeth heard this, she also sighed, showing a somewhat troubled expression. After thinking for a moment, she said: "Ignore them for now, just strengthen the security in that area. If there is trouble, arrest them. If there is no trouble, don't provoke them."
"Understood."
"And... the remaining civilians, you should have someone prepare an announcement as soon as possible to let them know that we are not bandits and traitors, and calm everyone down as soon as possible. As for the bureaucrats and nobles in the city, they will be placed under house arrest first, and we will wait for a while I will meet them one by one."
The general nodded: "I obey, Your Majesty the Duke."
After saying that, he turned and left. Elizabeth paused in the rooftop garden for a while, and finally turned around, followed the stairs, and returned to the corridor of the palace.
The Wood Army soldiers in the corridor were busy looking around, but when everyone met her, they would stop and salute her respectfully. Elizabeth followed the corridor and arrived at the underground cell of the palace. There was a strange priest locked up in the cell - he was locked up here when they first invaded the palace. It looked like he had been locked up for a long time, and he was still crazy and felt weird, so he was left here temporarily.
"Did the church lock you here?" Elizabeth walked to the door and asked softly through the sealed iron door.
"Who! Who... what person? I'm not..." hysterical voices came from inside.
"Your Majesty the Duke, we have just conducted a careful investigation and found out his identity." When the knight at the door said this, he suddenly lowered his voice and said with some hesitation, "This man should have been locked up by the Pope and used as... that What. You'd better not get close, he's too dirty, lest he hurt your eyes, we'd better deal with him together with other priests."
When Elizabeth heard this, she immediately realized what was going on.
Because of this, she shook her head.
"No, the church is not completely dead yet. Keep him, he has other uses."
As she spoke, she opened the door, completely ignoring the knight's obstruction, and walked into the basement. In the basement, she saw the priest in plain clothes - his body was clean and without any scars, but from the frightened to almost nervous eyes, she felt that the man in front of her was riddled with holes.
After thinking for a while, she spoke in a gentle voice: "Don't be afraid, I won't hurt you. You see, I am not a member of the church, Grant..."
It was okay at first, but when he mentioned that name, the priest instantly became extremely excited. He pushed Elizabeth away and backed away while shouting: "No! No... Stay away from me... Devil! Get out! Don't..."
Elizabeth frowned.
Forced to have no choice, she could only wave her hand and use the restraint technique to immobilize the other party. But what surprised her was that the moment the dark elements gathered towards the priest, the priest suddenly erupted with extremely terrifying spiritual power, which bounced all those elements away, causing the restraint technique to fail.
"How is that possible?" Elizabeth was startled and looked at the priest carefully. However, at this time, that powerful spiritual power disappeared without a trace, as if it had never appeared.
She felt very strange.
That spiritual power... not to mention others, was countless times more powerful than hers. It was as strong as a sea and should not appear in a young priest at all.
what happened
Elizabeth was about to find a few more mages to come over and carefully study the strange situation just now, but the knight outside the room suddenly knocked on the door, leaned against the door and said anxiously: "Your Excellency, there has just been a commotion in the Divine Blessing District of the city. , it seems there is a bishop hidden over there, please go over and have a look!"
"… All right."
She had no choice but to leave the room and rush outside quickly. As for this extremely eccentric young priest, she put it aside and would study it later.